<span style="color: #222222;">The German health minister Jens Spahn has issued a serious warning to the citizens of the country.<br />''<br />''Probably by the end of this winter, everyone in Germany will be vaccinated, cured, or dead, Jens Spahn said, as he urged more Germans to get the jab.<br />''<br />''Outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel has also warned that Germany's current COVID restrictions, including barring the unvaccinated from certain public spaces are not enough.<br />''<br />''Merkel told a meeting of leaders of her conservative CDU party that the country has a highly dramatic situation as new infections double every 12 days.<br />''<br />''The European Union's most populous country, Germany added another 30,643 cases yesterday, according to the Robert Koch Institute health agency, bringing the total since the start of the pandemic to just more than 5.3 million.<br />''<br />''Almost 100,000 people have died so far, including 62 during the past 24 hours. We have a very, very difficult situation in many hospitals, Spahn said.<br />''<br />''Meanwhile, Austria re-imposed a national lockdown yesterday, as it continued to register a record number of Covid19 infections. This is just days after it had announced that Covid-19 vaccination would be made a legal requirement from February next year.<br />''<br />''Some other European countries such as the Netherlands and Slovakia, have barred non-vaccinated people from accessing any non-essential stores or shopping malls.<br />''<br />''Slovakia has also asked people without vaccination not to attend any public event or gatherings and would need to test themselves at least twice a week even to just get to their work.<br />''<br />''Belgium and the United Kingdom are also experiencing a dangerous surge. Together, Europe is currently reporting nearly two-thirds of all new infections worldwide.<br />''<br />''The World Health Organisation WHO recently warned that if tougher measures were not put in place immediately, half a million additional deaths could take place by next February.<br />''<br />''The current wave of infections in Europe, which is happening despite high vaccination rates in several countries, is being blamed on a variety of factors, a few of which are unique to the region.</span>